


Nice and Accurate Insults

by foxyk



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Apocawasn't, First Kiss, Gen, God is a bastard, M/M, Post-Apocalypse, Scene: Garden of Eden (Good Omens), The Great Plan (Good Omens), The Ineffable Plan (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-01
Updated: 2019-10-01
Packaged: 2020-11-08 16:57:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,337
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20838914
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxyk/pseuds/foxyk
Summary: “We will be most understanding when you fail.”Gabriel had always assumed that Aziraphale had been the one to let the serpent into the Garden. He was the master of saying words that, if recounted, would sound completely appropriate despite their original delivery being decidedly unangelic.When your side doesn't like what you're doing for the Great Plan, maybe it's time to find a new side.





	1. In the Garden

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to [ForTheGreaterGood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood) for the beta read!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to [ForTheGreaterGood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood) for the beta read!

“But God, I haven’t the best reputation as it is-- not terribly warlike. If You don’t tell the other angels Your plan, won't they be… I dunno, angry?” Aziraphale realized his robe hem was in his hands again and he dropped it, picking up his sword from where it leaned on the wall to fiddle with that instead.

“They might be, but it’s My will. All you need tell them is that it’s ineffable.” She sounded so confident. She hadn’t made Aziraphale to be confident, and he felt that lack as he tried to form his thoughts into words.

“But You made us to follow Your will, above all else... so how could the Fall have…” He trailed off, uncertain of the words or perhaps incapable of speaking them.

“Theologians will answer that question for us someday, but just know: I made the rules of the universe, but I’m not controlling every part of it every second. As long as something is within those rules, it can happen. I gave you something I didn’t give the other angels, and it will help you as you navigate through the Great Plan.”

Aziraphale could already feel Her presence receding, leaving him alone with the wall.

“It’s not the sword, right? Loads of angels got flaming swords.” He tried to keep Her there, keep Her talking, keep the warmth of Her grace with him.

“It’s not the sword,” She replied, then, She was gone.

With a huff, Aziraphale took the sword and, as he’d just been shown, used it to pry loose a few bricks from the wall to Eden, leaving them on the ground nearby. The hole was about two handspans wide, just big enough for what the Lord had told him. Then, he went back to the Eastern Gate to wait.

*******

Crawly undulated along the wall in the dark of night, searching. The wall was too tall to climb and impossible to tunnel under (he’d tried that already), so he had to find a weakness to get in. He’d been told to go cause trouble, and this was the only place on Earth where there were angels, or humans, so it was really the only option he had. As he rounded the corner, he saw the angel. This was probably… East? He’d hit the other three gates already, and it had been a long night of avoiding discorporation.

He almost missed the opening, nearly revealing himself as the wall gave way to open space with the thick wooden gate inside. He could hear the angel breathing, but he didn’t dare look in.

“You know, someone’s going to find their way in sooner or later.” Crawly miracled his voice from the opposite side of the gate in an attempt to draw the angel away from his hiding place, tucked as tightly against the bricks as his serpentine body could get.

“Yeah, they will,” the angel agreed.

“That’ll mean you’ve failed,” Crawly tried again. That had gotten the last angel to go hunting in the scrub on the other side of the gate. He thought he had a good grasp now of how the gates worked, and he was pretty sure he could get this one open if the angel moved.

The angel didn’t move.

“Yeah probably,” the angel sighed, leaning back against the door. His sword was in his hand, but it wasn’t alight like the other angels’ swords had been. He seemed to be holding it more because it was expected than because he wanted to use it.

“You’re not terribly easy to insult you know.” Crawly, daring, slunk into the dim moonlight in front of the dark gate. He reared back, coiling into a tidy stack of himself.

“Well, demon, there’s nothing you can say to insult me that I haven’t heard from another angel already.”

The angel was bright-- white wings, white robes, light hair, light skin-- but he was so obscured by shadow that Crawly had only the impression of a light smudge against the dark door. Crawly tried to bristle at the casual use of _demon_, but he couldn’t seem to find it offensive. The angel just sounded tired.

“They call me Crawly,” he offered instead.

“Aziraphale.”

“I doubt you’d go for it, but uh, they told me to cause trouble, and there’s not much to be done out here.” Crawly used a tail tip to gesture around at the empty expanse. “You wouldn’t happen to know a way in?”

“You’ll have to keep going, I’m afraid, but if you’re meant to get in, you will,” Aziraphale replied.

“That’s probably fair. Thanks for not trying to light me on fire.” Crawly moved on his way, snugging back up against the wall as he went.

“Any time,” the angel, Aziraphale, replied.

How interesting it was, when he came upon a tidy stack of bricks removed from the wall not a hundred feet away. Crawly slithered through the perfectly snake-sized hole and immediately began to look for trouble. After all, that was his job, right?

***One apple later***

Aziraphale still burned with shame that the snake had gotten into the Garden. He knew She had wanted it to happen, but now the angels had banished Adam and Eve, and how was it fair, that she was pregnant and they had been naked and unarmed--

Unarmed.

Aziraphale had led them to the Eastern Gate, pointing to the wild forest across the desert. “You’ll be able to make shelter there, take this, and don’t let the sun set on you here.”

He pressed the hilt of his sword into Adam’s hand, ushered them out the gate, and closed it behind them.

He stood on top of the wall now, watching their progress, rain drops hitting his hair as the demon sheltered under his wing. He wasn’t sure yet why he’d offered it, but it seemed like the right thing to do. He really hoped that giving Adam the sword had been the right thing as well. Today was the first day he had to sit with the doubt that his creator had given him.

Maybe _that_ was Her gift. The thought was bleak.

“Did you realize that you’re actually quite beautiful?” Crawly asked after a long, amicable silence had passed between them.

“What I said before, about the Host finding every way to insult me-- it wasn’t a challenge, you know. You don’t have to think up new and clever insults for me.” Aziraphale heard the snap in his voice, but he couldn’t quite feel bad for it. He looked over, and the look on Crawly’s face was… not exactly what he’d expected.

The demon was blushing?

Snake eyes averted, he was blushing furiously, his lips pursed tight as though he could hardly believe what he’d said.

“Well, if that’s how you feel about it, I’ll just have to make sure that some day you believe it.” The demon stepped up to the edge of the wall, out of the protection of Aziraphale’s raised wing. “Until next time.”

He smiled and stepped off the edge, off to spread who knew what kind of trouble.

Aziraphale needed to patch the hole in the wall. He needed to figure out what his new assignment would be, now that no one needed to guard the Garden. First though, he’d enjoy the rain. After all, it was a gift from God, wasn’t it? These things should be enjoyed.

He tipped his face back into the droplets, letting them wash against his skin, and then shook his hair out and moved back to the shelter of the trees. Whatever his special _thing_ was, he hoped it was better than rain.


	2. Six thousand years later... give or take

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So many thanks to [ForTheGreaterGood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood) for the beta read!

Aziraphale sat in the cottage behind the garden, seething with anger.

_“We will be most understanding when you fail.”_

Aziraphale had spent a large number of years, a blessed eternity, refusing to swear. He was very, very close to doing so now.

Instead, he poured himself a cup of tea and fumed.

This was the Garden all over again. Except it wasn’t, was it? He had been told specifically to fail in the Garden. He’d been told specifically _how_ to fail. It hadn’t been traced to him, exactly-- how could it, when God Herself planned the deception?-- but none of the other angels on the walls that night had been sent to Earth on the last assignment that anyone could possibly hope to get.

That wasn’t, he considered, entirely fair an assessment to make of Earth.

The food on Earth was better than Heaven, and since God wasn’t talking nearly as much as She had before, the whole of Heaven had stopped feeling so much like basking in Her love as it was a reminder of how much less of Her you could feel now.

_“What you’re doing is praiseworthy, but obviously doomed to failure.” _

The words had been spoken spitefully; Gabriel had always assumed that Aziraphale had been the one to let the serpent into the Garden. He was the master of saying words that, if recounted, would sound completely appropriate despite their original delivery being decidedly unangelic.

Aziraphale hadn’t told Crowley of the conversation, when they’d met on the bus. Crowley had seemed so excited; his side was clearly not happy with the amount of Heavenly influence that Aziraphale had managed to exert over young Warlock. Why couldn’t he make _his own_ side see how effective it was?

There didn’t need to be a war. Aziraphale was sure of it.

He didn’t need to be pitted against his only friend.

***Apocalypse day***

_Satan was coming._

Satan was coming, and there was nothing Crowley could do about it. His knees and elbow hurt from hitting the pavement. He’d made it back almost to his feet, but he was being held down, subservient, by an infernal power greater than his own.

“This is Satan himself. It isn’t about Armageddon, this is personal.” He tried not to swear to Aziraphale, he knew the angel found it distasteful, but he continued with the only sentence he knew that lent the right gravitas to the situation: “We are fucked.”

Crowley could feel the divine energy in Aziraphale pushing at the edges of his corporation as he picked up the flaming sword he’d given away in the Garden. Much like Crowley had a tendency to revert to his natural form under duress, he could sense that Aziraphale was also rocked loose from the barrier between the infernal, the divine, and the mortal planes as the ground shifted and heaved.

“Come up with something,” Aziraphale demanded. He rarely demanded anything-- he wheedled, he pleaded, but a demand? The divine command was pressing into Crowley’s mind almost as strongly as the approaching Lord of Hell’s infernal presence was. It was deafening, the amount of energy from all sides, and, as Anathema had felt, the _anger_.

“Or…” Aziraphale considered the blade. No. He couldn’t be thinking of _fighting_ against _Satan_.

Crowley only knew of one angel who’d ever fought against a fallen Archangel. Michael had killed the Dragon, yes, but at great personal cost. She’d been discorporated at the end of it, and it was widely agreed that she’d come back out the other side of the whole situation… off. He couldn’t bear to look at Aziraphale and see the violence, the potential for cruelty that rested in Michael’s eyes.

“Or I’ll never talk to you again.” Aziraphale lowered the blade, but it remained in his hand, the edges of reality blurring around him as the sound of feathers preceded his wings. He was getting painful to look at, though Crowley doubted the humans could see it.

If Aziraphale fought Satan, no matter the outcome, he’d never be able to talk to Crowley again, and they both knew it. If he was discorporated, if he was killed, or if he won-- there was no way they could leave him in a shit assignment like _Earth_ if he killed the Morning Star himself.

Crowley needed a way to get them out of this, he needed the buzzing energy to stop, needed Aziraphale to stop oozing ethereally at the seams, he needed time to…

Well, he needed time to stop, didn’t he?

Crowley gathered himself, as much of himself as he could, and he forced his will on the universe, stopping time, stopping everything, stopping Satan himself so that he could get some blessed quiet and _think_.

*******

The International Express man left, taking his box with him, and Crowley felt the distance on the bench between them like just another sting in a series of many that Aziraphale had never, probably, truly meant for him to feel. He took another drink from the wine bottle that Aziraphale had miracled up for them and avoided thinking on it.

“There it is.” Aziraphale gestured to the bus that had just cleared the trees, making its way to their bench. “Oh, but it says Oxford on the front.”

Crowley shifted around some key pieces of the universe. “Yeah, but he’ll drive to London… just won’t remember why.”

“I suppose I should get him to drop me off at the bookshop.” The angel sounded… doubtful? Sad? Wistful? Crowley couldn’t quite place it, but he knew it was about to get much worse.

“It burned down, remember?” And somehow his voice was again that small wrecked thing that it had been, sitting in the bar after screaming through the smoke, a shadow of itself wrapped around a jolt of pain. He tried to relax his throat, tried to speak normally, perhaps casually. “You could stay at my place, if you like.

A complex series of emotions happened on Aziraphale’s face: he was pleased, touched, relieved, dismayed, and then practically dejected in as much time as it took for him to try and fail to speak twice.

“I don’t think my side would like that.” He settled on an old favorite of theirs, an excuse they’d both used as often as any. Even with his face twisted in distaste, he was still so beautiful. Crowley still remembered at odd times how he’d blurted that out on the wall, but the sting of the embarrassment was so low compared to the truth of the statement.

“You don’t have a side anymore. Neither of us do. We’re on our own side,” Crowley reminded himself as much as Aziraphale. “Like Agnes said, we’re going to have to choose our faces wisely.”

Aziraphale didn’t respond at that, so Crowley flagged the bus and they both boarded. Crowley had assumed they’d be done talking for now, like they usually were when Aziraphale needed time to mull over new information. Surprising him though, Aziraphale sat in the seat next to him, and then more shocking yet, he did something they hadn’t dared to do since casual contact between men had fallen out of vogue: he took Crowley’s hand.

Crowley felt a knot of tension inside himself relax, a tight wire that had been there since he’d first called Aziraphale from the Bentley and not gotten an answer.

“You know, you’re the only demon I’ve ever even heard of, ever heard tell of, with an imagination?” Aziraphale asked conversationally.

“I mean, they all sort of figure out how to tempt people, it’s not an especially hard job--”

“No, but you and I both know that you do it better, more imaginatively. And that’s not the point I’m trying to make, anyway. You asked if maybe the Almighty planned it this way… and I’ve been thinking about it. On the wall, in Eden, She told me to let you in, you know.”

“She _what_?” Crowley almost let go of Aziraphale’s hand in surprise.

“She had me open the hole, and She refused to tell the other angels about it. But then She told me that She gave me something the other angels didn’t get, and I’ve been mulling that over for a while now--”

“That’s a bit of an understatement, if you mean the last six thousand years,” Crowley mumbled, cutting him off.

“--and I think that She gave you something special too: imagination,” Aziraphale finished. His tone was testy, but he gave Crowley’s hand a reassuring squeeze.

“What’d She give you, a flaming sword? Because you lost that very quickly.” Crowley _almost_ felt bad, but he said it anyway, reminding the angel that he wasn’t nice.

“No. I asked Her, and She wouldn’t tell me anything except that it was not the sword.” Silence stretched between them at that, until finally Crowley realized that Aziraphale wasn’t going to say anything else until he did.

“Well, what do you think it was?” Crowley asked, almost hesitant.

“I have the ability to dis… well, to uh, to not do what I’m told.” Aziraphale blushed a pretty pink as he said it, and looked out the window to avoid Crowley’s gaze.

“You can’t drop a bombshell like that and not elaborate.” Crowley leaned his shoulder against Aziraphale’s, testing a boundary as well as emphasising his question, but he didn’t get a reply.

“I suppose that explains the shellfish though,” Crowley mused, “and the mixed fabrics. You were doing that very early on, but I could never complain about the effect, because you've always been beautiful, but you've got this deliberate style that--”

“Is that an insult or a compliment? I really could never be sure.” Aziraphale finally looked back at him, the flush high on his cheeks now, nearly crimson and easy to see even in the dark of the bus.

Crowley took off his sunglasses, making eye contact with Aziraphale before he spoke again.

“I have always found you to be beautiful, even before I knew how kind and clever you were alongside, and I’ve never meant any of that as an insult when it’s managed to work its way out of my mouth.” Crowley gave the sentence as much gravitas as he could, making sure not to be too flippant or casual. This was important for Aziraphale to know, and Crowley took the delivery of that information seriously.

“My dear, I have done many things over the last few centuries that ought to have caused me to fall, including lying, specifically to God, about the whereabouts of a flaming sword. Which is why I have no idea why I was scared for so long that you would interpret my fall as your fault if I did something as simple as this.”

And then Aziraphale’s mouth was on Crowley’s.

Crowley, for his part, didn’t have to stop time to think about what he wanted now, and he pressed back, nearly pinning Aziraphale against the bus window, one hand in Aziraphale’s hair, the other still desperately holding his hand. When they broke for breath with a laugh, Crowley was basically in Aziraphale’s lap. His shirt was rucked up, and Aziraphale was holding him close at the small of his back.

“Our side?” Crowley was almost ashamed for asking, and still yet scared shitless about what the response could be.

“I was an idiot for ever suggesting anything else,” Aziraphale sighed, leaning in to rest his cheek on Crowley’s. He’d risked the fall, and he was right-- Crowley would have blamed himself-- but he’d have blamed himself no matter what reason the Almighty had used to justify casting the principality out. The stupid, brave, kind angel who had, not six hours ago, been about to fight Satan himself with only his previously misplaced flaming sword. Even that was still moving quite against orders, but here he was-- unfallen, having kissed a demon, on their own side, but still in Her good graces.

“Come to my place,” Crowley whispered in Aziraphale’s ear, causing the angel to shudder a little beneath him, the unspoken temptation clear between them.

“I think our side would like that,” Aziraphale whispered back. “Quite a lot, in fact.”

“I think our side could be convinced,” Crowley said musingly. He broke first and chuckled, pulling back to look at Aziraphale, so unexpectedly, amazingly close. Then he kissed the beautiful, stupid, clever angel again, simply because he could.


End file.
